Re: [gentoo-dev] Changing order of default virtual/udev provider

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 12:27 AM, Anthony G. Basile <blueness@g.o> wrote:
> On 2/8/16 10:09 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
>> How many of those 14 distros have more than 14 users?
>
> gentoo is very unpopular as a distro.  however, it excels as a meta
> distro.  if you marginalize its special features, you take away all its
> charm.

Gentoo's special feature is that it is source-based, not that it uses
a different udev implementation from everybody else by default.

>>
>> Look, I get it, some people don't like systemd.  That's fine.
>> However, you have to realize at this point that a non-systemd
>> configuration is anything but mainstream.
>
> neither is a system based on musl or uclibc, but if you need an embedded
> system, then these are "mainstream".

Sure, but they're also not defaults.

>
> anyhow, the argument in the subject is the order of udev and eudev in
> the virtual, not systemd vs eudev.

And that is about defaults.

>
>  There will always be a
>> "poppyseed linux" whose purpose in life seems to be to preserve linux
>> without sysfs or some other obscure practice.
>
> no, more like special uses. you're framing the issue based on your
> notion of "mainstream"

My notion of mainstream, and Fedora's, and Debian's, and RHEL's, and Arch's...

>>
>>>
>>> it needs to be in the new stage4s to make a bootable system.  imo a
>>> stage4 should be bootable modulo a kernel.
>>>
>>
>> Sure, a stage4 based on systemd makes a lot of sense.
>
> not for embedded and the things i work on.  these have users.
>

Systemd makes plenty of sense for many embedded solutions.  For the
kinds of solutions where it doesn't make sense, I'm not sure that
linux makes sense.

But, even if you accept that eudev makes more sense for some embedded
solutions, we're taking about the default here, not the default for
the embedded profile (which doesn't actually exist, though with
mix-ins it might some day).

>>
>> I think that offering an eudev-based distro as a default just doesn't
>> make sense in 2016.
>
> because you have a limited sense of usefulness

It doesn't make sense as a default in the context of the situations
where our default profile is intended.  Maybe you could convince
somebody that it makes sense as a choice for a very specialized use
case, but in that use case you're probably going to have a list of USE
flags a mile long and be overriding numerous default providers.  eudev
would just be one more in that case.

>
>> 2.  People get offended when others express a different preference.
>
> all the vitriolic attacks i get about eudev come from the gentoo
> community.  outside of this community i get praise.

Gentoo is a community focused on providing a source-based distro where
you have choices.  I doubt anybody in the Gentoo community is bothered
about your offering another choice.

The controversy comes in when you want to make it a default, and start
arguing that it is somehow better than the solution everybody else is
using.

Outside of Gentoo people either aren't concerned at all with eudev (it
probably isn't even in their distro repositories), or they're a tiny
distro whose main purpose in life seems to be to avoid installing
systemd.  Of course you're going to get praise from them.

I've always supported having eudev hosted by Gentoo.  I just don't
support it being the default udev provider.

-- 
Rich